Co-presented with Women in Film and Television Victoria

Screening at this year’s MIFF, She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry reflects on the history of the women’s movement in the late 1960s, and focuses on the important women who fought for equality. The film provides an excellent opportunity to look back on women in Melbourne who actively fought for women’s rights and brought about change.

Join Kate Jinx, Merle Thornton, Mary Crooks, Marilyn Lake and Jean Taylor to hear their stories, and find out how their activism has affected us today.

Merle Thornton is one of Australia’s most important feminist activists. In 1965, she and Ro Bogner chained themselves to a bar rail of the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in protest against the exclusion of women from public bars. Marilyn Lake, in The History of Australian Feminism, says their action "presaged a new phase in the history of Australian feminism." Following the bar protest, Merle founded the Equal Opportunities for Women Association. One of the first priorities of EOW under Merle’s leadership was the successful campaign to eliminate the ‘marriage bar’, which excluded married women from career public service in Australia. In 1965 Merle saw that elimination of the marriage bar would be of limited benefit without the simultaneous introduction of maternity leave to allow women to return to their careers following childbirth. Both these groundbreaking changes were legislated in 1966.

Mary Crooks has been the Executive Director of the Victorian Women's Trust since November 1996. She has guided the Trust's annual grants program to make real and lasting differences for women as well as undertaking research on and advocacy for women in politics, women's unpaid work, family violence, family-friendly work practices, discrimination and women's economic security. Mary has also been active in law reform campaigns on such issues as the elimination of provocation as a defence to violence against women. Mary has designed and led some ground-breaking projects including the Purple Sage project, Ordinary Women Extraordinary Lives, Watermark Australia, and the more recent Gender Lens project. Mary is the author of A Switch in Time - Restoring Respect to Australian Politics.

Jean Taylor is a radical lesbian feminist writer and activist based in Melbourne. Her latest book, Stroppy Dykes: Radical Feminist Activism in Victoria During the 1980s, was published by Dyke Books Inc in 2012, the second book of a trilogy Jean has been writing and publishing for the past few years about the Women's Liberation Movement and lesbian feminist activism in Victoria and elsewhere.

Kate Jinx is a writer, artist, and broadcaster. She is a current PhD candidate at UNSW, in film studies and cultural history. Kate is also the Director of Programming at Golden Age Cinema in Sydney, and the National Film Editor for The Thousands. Formerly of FBi Radio and triple j, she is a regular guest on ABC radio and television, and has given lectures about culture, design, and film at UWS, UTS, and NYU. She has also presented performance lectures about very important topics like evil cats and teen witches at the MCA, AGNSW, Craft Victoria and Performance Space.